I'm not saying that there is an excuse, but I'm also not saying that those small criticisms warrant a complete overhaul to the game. In many ways you'd have to give up something in order for those to be better and if they did focus more time on those elements the world itself may become nothing more than a MMO world.

When you look at the world it's amazing to see it in comparison to other games. Dragon Age and Mass Effect don't even hold a candle to the sheer atmosphere, or beauty that's Skyrims world. WoW and Kingdoms of Amalur have good worlds but nothing on the level of Skyrim's. The world feels very organics, it has subtle beauty and depth. It doesn't feel overly video gamey and just feels very natural. I've never really played a game that quite had the world that Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim have had. They're the masters at crafting a world that just blows everyone else's away.

Yeah it may not have dialogue like Mass Effect, or choices like Dragon Age. It may not have the loot of WoW, or the combat of Kingdoms of Amalur. But it has something better than any of those games and in order for them to be great at what they do they had to give up something in return.

Ultimately you can never be the best at everything, you have to specialize. Whether this be real life, or a video game you always will excel at something and fail at something else.

So... What you are saying is: if skyrim wasn't an open world game it wouldn't have the bugs of an open world game? Thank you Watson......

I sort of agree, but only to some extent. The problem I have is that they're constantly trying to make the world bigger, more expansive, more "unknown", and while they do that, they have to strip away uniqueness and originality because they wouldn't have time to do this by hand... they've spent all the time trying to create an environment that's believable from far away, while you're walking across it, but up close there's no depth.

While I happen to agree with you, he does have a point. TES games are known for their exploration and 'living' game-worlds rather than their characters and writing, so given that the whole series has been like that it's not exactly fair to pan the game for it since it was pretty obvious going in that those areas would svck. That does not mean that such criticisms are invalid, though.

He also seems to be saying (it's a bit hard to parse) that if we want good writing and characters then something has to give somewhere else; this is absolutely true, since there is always a limit to how much time can be spent in development, which begs the question of how much has to give, and where it has to come from. The obvious answer is the openness of the game-world, since in linear games it's far easier to write deep characters and stories since the developers know approximately when a player will be in a given area, and can tailor the writing accordingly. The cost, of course, is a near-total sacrifice of exploration, which would be anathema to the TES series and would cause a firestorm of epic proportions if it ever happened.

I'd suggest taking it from the voice acting, specifically the random natter tacked on to every NPC that they spew non-stop whenever you're in the vicinity. I know why they added it, since it's part of an urban environment, but it quickly gets irritating and we wouldn't really lose anything if it went away.

I don't even need that well developed plots/characters. Just a little more. It'd be nice, but I can find those type of games elsewhere. What I'd like to see more of is just better scripting. You can still have the open environment, but it needs a bit more personality in the scripting of NPCs.

Has anyone here run into the dungeon/quest "Ironbind Barrow"? It starts off with an encounter with a redguard female (Salma) and an argonian mage (Beem-Ja), arguing outside about whether they shoud go in. Salma is excited about the loot they might find, and Beem-Ja is cautious. When you show up, Beem-Ja sees strength in numbers and they join you if you walk in.

Anyways, it's a good example of just a random encounter in an open world and some fairly developed "stories" with the NPCs, even though you don't interact with them for long. They have more personality than NPCs you see in towns day in day out. There are other quests with the same feel, but I don't think there are enough like this.

the whole dragon crisis is kind of an afterthought if you actually get into the current happenings in tamriel. red mountain exploding, the great war, the almeri dominion and the civil war was more interesting to me than the whole dragonborn thing is.

so if all you did was rush down the story in 10 hours and quit then well i just feel sorry for you.

all they had to do was actually fill the disc up....

I do not want TES to become linear or semi-linear(like DA:O and Mass Effect for example). There are few enough games that are openworld as it is.

The open world of the TES games is the most important part of the series. If you make a linear game out of it, it wouldn′t be TES any more.

There is always a balance in an open world game between focusing on the game world and focusing on the story, and traditionally Bethesda chooses to focus on the game world (Obsidian, for example, chose to focus on the story).

Considering the level of manpower Bethesda has, it still seems bizarre that they can't create better quest lines. They have enough guys to put ten people to work on dungeons and one on each city (or so they claim), yet at the same time they don't seem to have a single half-decent writer on the team. I'm temped to believe that the reason Bethesda can't produce well written quests that give you flexibility in how to complete the objective has nothing to do with an unwillingness to focus on producing good questing but an inability. Moreover, they wasted a whole lot of effort trying to fill the game with radiant quests which turned out to be even less interesting than their own writing.

Considering this, I'd say that the worst thing for Bethesda to do would be to try and make a more linear game so they can create a better story with better characters. Its not their talent. Its best to let them stick to creating interesting open world games that are exploration driven, because that's what they are exceptionally good at.

There is nothing wrong in wanting to have your cake & eating it & it's possible to have a completely open world enviroment with memorable characters, It just takes a bit more time to develop & Bethesda were in a very good position to implement that after their success with their previous games.

We all knew that Bethesda would create a world class open world game, They have been doing that for years & occupy their comfort zone, I sincerely wished that they would branch out & bravely tackle some area's in which they are weaker & improve it.

I think a mix of all the exploring and dragon crisis together makes the game work so well for me. Like uncovering wordwalls starts leading me to interesting places and helps the dragonborn idea get fleshed out indirectly. It doesn't have to be so in my face and explicit. The whole atmosphere tells me a story of sorts about the ancient nords and what they thought of dragons. And I have to wonder how I myself relate to all of it.

Some of my discoveries neatly coincided with how I was leveling too. For example, I had just gotten high in smithing, but I didn't open up any dragon armor until I found a dragon helmet in a dungeon (the one with the weapons Okin and Eduj). So I got to thinking that my character started "studying" it and forging his own armor.

Whatever. I don't know how to articulate it actually..

Bethesda should continue their way of constructing a game. Somehow the "feel" of Bethesda games is just something you cant find in other game. Their games tend to have their own "magical" feeling.

The only thing TES needs is more flesh-out and memoriable characters and quest, along with technologi to make superb animations and fluid combat. The problems with this is probably the consoles.

Just imagin the world they could create in a game when consoles are powerfull enough.

Damn, you had me in agreement until you mentioned the consoles. lol. Consoles aren't a hindrance to fluid combat and animation. Graphics and memory space, yes. But animation and fluidity isn't exactly the same thing as that.

There are always going to be tradeoffs when making an open-world game. Just as there are tradeoffs for giving the player so much freedom over who their character is, rather than giving them a set or semi-set character.

Ultimately, the freedom TES gives the player is more than worth the tradeoffs. Those who disagree should [censored] off and play one of the countless linear action-RPGs available to them, instead of trying to change the series to be like everything else.

Want a compelling story? Go play a story-driven RPG. Want a complex player-character with a deep backstory? Go play an RPG with a set character. Want an extremely polished game with stunning graphics and very few bugs? Go play an RPG with a linear gameworld.

TES' strong suit has always been exploration, but to limit that merely to the physical exploration of spaces is missing the point. Crafting a world is more than just placing a tree there and a cave over here and a house next to that rock. It's that, but it's also about creating believable inhabitants, with varying cultures and goals and conflicts. You can't meaningfully separate the inhabitants from the worldspace they occupy. What Bethesda does right now is set dressing. They build huge worlds filled to the brim with individual eating utensils and cabbages and books and whatever, and it's all ultimately boring because I don't care about this world at all.

Set design is only half the equation. This is something Beth doesn't really seem to get.

Unless it is an open world, sandbox game, it is not for me. Other stuff can be added if there is time and room after creating the open world, and the ability to change it with the Creation Kit. You start with the basics that make it what has been the best series I have ever played, then add other things.

OP obviously does not understand what a TES game should be. Between his opening statement and statements like http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1352641-really-no-custom-spellmaking/page__st__210__p__20409606#entry20409606, it seems he won't be happy until TES turns into Gothic 4 or Dragon Age II.

There will always be linear games with RPG elements, stop trying to push for there to nothing else but that.


TES is about open worlds and broad freedoms not available from other series. When TES games deviate from that [Redguard, Battlespire, ....Skyrim's magic system], it betrays the formula that makes it great.

I'm still in agreement with the open ended nature staying in tact, but if you are going to write a story, just go deeper than this. They've created some compelling characters, but sometimes I have to wonder what it's all amounting to. Rather, I should say the characters have potential to be compelling. Even the "unlikable" ones, like Elenwen. If we're sort of destined to have face off the Thalmor, I hope they revist her. She's makes a good antagonist. As it stands, I'm not willing to call her an antagonist just yet.. except in my head. Which is inexcusable trash, as far as storytelling goes. If I wanted to rely on my imagination, then I can write, draw, and play music. Those are my other hobbies. Gaming is another hobby, with it's own requirements.

EDIT: @ EVERYONE: OP was trying to be clever and was actually defending Skyrim by saying it's story, dialogue, and overall depth should not be subject to harsh criticism as it's an open world game. Since it's an open world game, it does not and cannot focus on story, dialogue, and so on and so forth. I STRONGLY disagree with OP, just wanted to clarify this here as many of us were hopelessly confused since OP wouldn't just come out and say it. Anyways, here we go:


Of course you're saying there is an excuse-- the excuse being that Bethesda creates open world games. The ideology (for a long time) was that players will have to deal with shortcomings if they want a sandbox RPG. I agree, and I'm fine with that. The bugs are acceptable (aside from the PS3 memory issue, which I found unacceptable). You don't need a completely new hand crafted quest pertaining to every bounty in Skyrim, sure. The last line of what you typed here really bothers me. You're saying that if Skyrim polished its story, added meaningful dialogue with consequences as well as interesting NPC's it would be an MMO? This makes very little sense. The "go kill 10 board and come back" is a staple of MMO gameplay, and one that seems like it's worked its way into Skyrim "go kill this bandit, come back and get gold."

Now, while we're talking about both genre constraints and MMO's, let's look at The Old Republic. BioWare managed to have excellent dialogue, a great story, diverse side quests, all in a huge MMO world. Before that game, no one would criticize an MMO's story or quests because it's an MMO. It's a grind fest. That's its genre. Well, BioWare broke the stereotype so why can't Bethesda?


Interesting you brought up KoA, as that serves to further go against your argument. KoA is an open world game. It's huge, and still has interesting combat. Is it as realistic as Skyrim? No. The art style they chose was rather cartoonish-- but still impressive. And yes, it IS still an open world game. Does Skyrim have subtleties that KoA doesn't? Sure! But just because that waterfall looks *really* cool in Skyrim isn't an excuse to have an overall bland and boring combat system. The argument since Morrowind was, "it's an open world game. It would be too taxing on developers to create a good looking combat system for an open world game. Well, obviously KoA beat that "argument." I'm not a game designer, but I don't see how creating fluid, interesting looking combat would somehow be too much for them to handle simply because the game map is big.


As for dialogue, nobody is asking for BioWare quality (realistically). BioWare has always created some of the best RPG's we've ever seen because of their writing. That would be like telling Chuck Palahniuk that he needs to write on par with George RR Martin. Palahniuk wrote some excellent books and fans still demand quality from him, but nobody expects him to beat out Martin. Not gonna happen. HOWEVER, I find Skyrim's dialogue to be so abysmally shallow and lacking I think it's a perfectly legitimate area for complaint. In an RPG, we need choices. Even the good, neutral, evil choices you cited earlier would be 100x better than what we currently have in place. Maybe you'd be concerned about memory constraints, adding that much content to the game-- well, I made several threads (I think you contributed to a few of them, still stubbornly demanding voice acting) which covered the issue of voice acted dialogue vs. test dialogue (provided the text was deeper, more meaningful, with branching options). AGAIN, why can't Bethesda hire writers to create interesting dialogue for the game?


No one is asking for the best of everything-- not even close. We're asking for a step above mediocrity. Bethesda has (once again) brought us a very fun open world game, but as an RPG it's failing worse than prior installments. Their budget, the time they had to produce the game, and their experience should have brought us a more interesting story, better dialogue, and more memorable NPC's. Monster variety, quest variety, writing, dialogue, combat, and depth should NEVER be sacrificed because "it's got a big map."

the problems i have with skyrim are very fixable and do not need to impact the open-world freedom that beth does a great job at giving us.

better writing, depth, smarter mechanics and gameplay options/customization doesn't require an overhaul to what makes their games great.

If only an apple pie were not an apple pie, but rather a chocolate cake.

The single largest problem plaguing an open-world game is when progression stops. When you have nothing left to spend money on, there are no more upgrades, you cannot raise your level, the game is too easy, etc etc. I think it is fantastic they can create such a great open-world with as much content as it has. The problem is that there really isn't a whole lot of incentive to do it for many players. This really isn't that hard of a problem to fix. You just need to create a progression and alternate advancement system that allows players a sense of progression (character and itemization) throughout their experience. Enemies further would need to scale with you as well. When the game gets trivial, I find myself losing interest quickly. To give you an idea how this might work in Skyrim:

1.) Skill cap is removed. 100 becomes a soft cap. You can raise skills past 100 but at a much slower rate than before. - Players who do NOT want to switch from say One-Hand to Two-Hand to progress can now stick with One-Hand and progress.
2.) Alternate advancement system - Perks SHOULD be capped so you do not have one character that does everything. There should be an Alternate advancement system that allows you to modify the Perks, Skills, Spells you DO have to be more effective.
3.) Scaling itemization - Having static values for items is pretty lame. Loot should mean something. I should be excited and want to explore chests for upgrades or receive upgrades from quests. I am not. One Daedric Greatsword is the same as ALL Daedric Greatswords. This model makes it to where you can find BETTER Daedric Greatswords. Daedric Greatsword I, Daedric Greatsword II and so forth seemingly never ending.
4.) Enemies scale - I know what the complaint is "But if enemies scale I won't ever feel like I am progressing!!" That isn't true. There should always be enemies that are much higher than you and challenging, ones lower than you that are easy, and ones even level that are a fair fight. It is a cycle, you outgrow one tier of enemies and move on to the next. Enemies you previously could not beat, are now an even match.

Amen.

TES is the computer manifestation of the old narrative roleplaying before D&D started putting out preset scenarios and trivialized the genre. You are the story teller and Bethesda imposing more structure would ruin that. Yes I would like to see more consequence for chices and actions, but do not make it more linear. If you do not like this kind of game, don't play it, don't start a campaign to ruin it for folks who like making their own story.